January 1, 2003

Does Johnny Cash care who's driving anymore?

His collaboration with Rick Rubin has been pretty fruitful so far, with five well-received records released since the pair started working together in 1995. Rubin lines up the unlikely tunes ("Rusty Cage" in 1996 and a Will Oldham song on the last of these American Recordings albums), and Cash delivers them to spare guitar, with that wonderful voice. He's not just "Folsom Prison Blues" anymore – this Johnny Cash is liable to record a duet with Queen Latifah, so watch yourself, pigeonholer music fan. That's a great thing.

But I gotta say I think maybe this redefinition-of-Johnny-Cash business has run its course. "Personal Jesus" here is not so bad, but the Nine Inch Nails tune, "Hurt," is ridiculous. It's kind of like Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones in that movie Entrapment, in which they play these burglars dripping with sexual tension. Connery is still cool and all, but the idea of him getting a boner over a chick one-eighth his age is really an act of terrorism on the part of Hollywood. Johnny Cash interpreting power-goth sexy sex addict Trent Reznor is not too far from that.

I figured I'd give this a chance because I love Johnny Cash, but shit, the songs are so boring they make me want to kill myself. The title track is really good, with creepy Biblical imagery and Cash's fantastic baritone in full effect, but they've got the microphone so close to his face that you can hear him licking his lips. Cash is as vital as ever (you can hear it in the first song and in "Give My Love to Rose") – it just seems like Rubin has forgotten how to draw it out of him. (Mike McGuirk)

Common
Electric Circus (MCA)

When Common boasts, "I'm the only cat in hip-hop / Who can go to a thrift shop / And get up to the ghetto / And get props" ("I Got a Right Ta"), he mocks his own boho image. However, as an artist who's reinvented himself on each of his now five albums, he's more than just a "conscious" rapper in an applejack hat. With his expansive imagination, Common is emerging as one of hip-hop's most ambitious artists.

The album has much with the Roots' recent Phrenology, mostly owing to the presence of the ?uestlove as one of Electric Circus's primary producers. ?uest lavishes attention on even the most minute sonic details, whether it's the pushing drums pistons on "Soul Power" or the hypnotic synthesizer swirls on "Aquarius." More than just beats, these are songs with texture, sublimely weaving rock, jazz, and soul influences together in a way that challenges conventional wisdom.

The album's aesthetic innovation is fitting given that Common aspires to be a black music visionary in the iconoclastic style of Prince, Hendrix, Marley, etc. He's not quite there yet – ironically, his two weakest songs are the putty-soft "Star *69 (PS With Love)," featuring Prince, and the indulgent, operatic "Jimi Was a Rockstar."

These slight missteps aside, Common is still in fine lyrical form, viciously slapping the wack on songs such as "New Wave" yet baring a sensitive, compassionate side on "Between Me, You and Liberation." The album's best qualities are distilled into "I Am Music." With Jill Scott's vocals dancing beneath the ragtime rhythm, Common bursts out with "Since the bush / I've been ya'll way to escape / Through 8-tracks, wax, CDs and tape / I am music." The joy of the moment is palpable, and you revel along with Common as he plays grand ringmaster in Electric Circus's playground. (Oliver Wang)

Raveonettes
Whip It On (The Orchard)

Scandinavia just keeps going to seed. What is it about balance, order, enlightened health care, and groovy, practical design that makes bands like the Hives, Sahara Hotnights, and now the Raveonettes turn to rock, rather than, oh, the Eurovision song contest? Guess that urge to merge with ecstatic, doom-driven, fuzzed-to-the-gills guitar comes naturally when the alternative is dull, seamless sanity. Under those circumstances, wouldn't any bored, creative person with a brain feel the need to glumly intone, as the Raveonettes do on "Beat City," "Wanna die in Beat City, run run run / Wanna hang with girls, shoot my gun / Wanna catch the rays of the sun / Wanna drink and drive, have some fun." Not an original thought in their pretty heads, and vocalist-guitarist Sune Rose Wagner and vocalist-bassist Sharin Foo can be proud of it, glowering with all their might like a Gap-ified Lux Interior and Poison Ivy, on the pseudo-B-movie-poster-like cover of their first recording, the EP Whip It On. Just imagine Mates of States gone bad, body snatcher-style, with plenty of tightly interlocked, zombie boy-girl vocals. Throw in gallons of reverb, bottomed-out clodhopper bass, a bunch of processed-to-hell sleigh bells, an appropriately mechanical-sounding drum machine, and a thirst for guitar drone, and you can draw only one conclusion: the Raveonettes have decided their best chance of one-upping their influences (the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Cramps, and the Seeds) is to just turn everything up to 12. In the end Whip It On is fairly one-note ("recorded in glorious B minor") – good thing it's a pretty pleasurable note. (Kimberly Chun)

Aaliyah
I Care 4 U (Blackground/Universal)

I Care 4 U pairs singles and soundtrack hits with previously unreleased tracks that function like B-sides. At least now you don't have to look at Eddie Murphy's Dr. Doolittle each time you reach for "Are You That Somebody?" – still one of Timbaland's peaks as a producer. The infamous baby sample remains perversely original, and the nervous, anticipatory, double-crossing scenario, as on the best Aaliyah tracks, invites a variety of interpretations while maintaining an intelligent sense of mystery. "Try Again" 's hard, furiously fuzzy, and brittle rhythm almost outraces the graceful, light vocal. This trademark dynamic makes it another of the past decade's best singles.

Timbaland obviously resented talking to the media when Aaliyah died. The few words he said conveyed she was his musical soul mate of sorts – he made it clear his freest and most inventive music came from their collaborations. (The best track on Justin Timberlake's Justified, "Cry Me a River," should have been an Aaliyah song: his stiff falsetto only underlines how she would have laced Timbaland's track every which way but wack.) I Care 4 U's best "new" song, "Don't Know What to Tell Ya," is a Timbaland production and a casually complicated, defiant flip side to Aaliyah's "We Need a Resolution" – handcuff-kinky futurist blues for an era in which technology bends familiar flirtations, doubts, and disputes into different forms.